Red Tape and Salt Lines
by Lucillia
Summary: Besides the usual problems with her department, BAU Section Chief Erin Strauss has devilishly tricky ones that're more up her cousins' alley to deal with. Problems, such as the demon in the BAU.
1. Henricksen and the BAU

Victor Henricksen stared at the wreckage that had once been the Sheriff's office and town police station. He'd stepped out earlier to get something to eat, and a few items to help with the clean-up and warding of the station that was now a smoldering heap. Obviously the few demons that had gotten away had come back with backup. Had he been in there, he had no doubt that he would be dead too. How he had thought he could fight an army of monsters and come away almost completely unscathed, he didn't know. One thing he did know was that if he wanted to survive another situation like this or something similar, it would be a good idea to have good men who knew what they were doing at his back. Good men such as the Winchesters and other hunters like them.

On that vein, he knew that calling in and reporting the Winchesters dead was only a temporary measure. With the work that the Winchesters did, it was only a matter of time before they popped up again. Before they came back into the eyes of the FBI, he was going to have to do some quick work to separate fact from fantasy in regards to their charges. They'd probably have a better chance of getting away alive when they were caught again if he did so. While a criminal was ostensibly just a criminal, even federal agents treated criminals differently according to the crimes they committed. Criminals with a bunch of crappy credit card fraud charges were watched less closely than Serial Killers and were less likely to be shot at during an escape for instance...

He would have to give a report about today. It would have to be heavily edited of course and provide scientific sounding reasons for what happened today even though what happened had nothing to do with science.

First though, Henricksen decided that he needed to make a trip down to the nearest tattoo parlor before shopping for salt and some paint that matched the god awful carpet in his office and researching exorcism rituals since the tape the Winchesters had used went with the station.

AaBbCcDd

Section Chief Erin Strauss of the BAU walked into Victor Henricksen's office wondering at the angry message he'd gotten about the Winchester file that had been closed with the recent deaths of the Winchesters after a gas line blew taking out a Sheriff's office and the helicopter that had been sent to retrieve them. Normally she wouldn't bother with such a thing herself, but Henrickson's accusations of misbehavior within her department had intrigued her.

The man was surprisingly polite, considering the call she had received. He had even pulled out a chair for her and offered her a glass of water - of which she took a sip to be polite as well - before getting down to business. It was possible that the man's rudeness during the call had been the result of being given the run around after surviving a rather traumatic experience.

"May I ask why your unit has been blowing smoke up my ass for the last year?" Henricksen asked.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The profile for the Winchesters was completely wrong. It looked fine on the surface, but..." Henricksen replied.

"But?" she asked.

"I spent time with them before the station blew up while I was out getting something to eat. Their reactions, everything, it didn't match up. I went back over their files with a fine toothed comb, and noticed several inconsistencies that couldn't be explained away by a profiling error that wasn't deliberate." Henricksen replied.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The inconsistencies with the cases against the Winchesters themselves are glaring enough when you look more closely at them, but... Take the incident in St. Louis for example, seeing as it was the case that brought Dean Winchester to your department's attention." Henricksen said.

"What about it?" she asked.

"You were basing all of your subsequent profiling on that, even ramming things that obviously didn't fit into place to make it fit the St. Louis profile. The major problem with that, is that if you had looked closer you would have quickly realized that you were profiling at least two different people and attributing crimes committed by one to another. I have no doubt that the St. Louis profile was accurate, but as it wasn't Dean Winchester..." Henricksen said.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"St. Louis. A man that looks exactly like Dean Winchester starts committing a bunch of murders. His DNA is at all of the crime scenes. The man is killed in the home of a victim who only survived because he was interrupted. The man is identified as Dean Winchester. That's it, case closed, Dean Winchester committed several murders, and he's dead. End of story." Henricksen says.

"And?" she finds herself asking. Somehow she knows that it's not the end of the story, especially considering the fact that Dean Winchester definitely did not die in St. Louis.

"When the comparisons I had done against the real Dean Winchester after Milwaukee came back inconclusive, I figured some lab rat had fucked up somewhere. We dug the fucker from St. Louis up after we caught the Winchesters in Arkansas. He looked an awful lot like Dean Winchester, right build, right shape, but the dental records didn't match. That guy had perfect teeth, Winchester has amalgam fillings in two of his molars. Someone had a comparison done with the corpse while I was busy chasing the Winchesters, the DNA matches for the murders in St. Louis were all to the guy that got buried in St. Louis." Henricksen said.

"So, you're saying that my guys took the wrong profile and ran with it, ignoring evidence that pointed elsewhere much the same as you yourself had done, and you're blaming your failure to notice you had the wrong guy on my people." She said angrily.

Why had she even come here? When she heard the accusations of misconduct in her department, she had expected proof that would confirm her suspicions about certain members of the BAU. Instead of getting the evidence she needed to make certain dismissals, this bastard was blaming her department because he'd chased down a pair of criminals for some crimes they didn't commit until they died.

"I'm man enough to admit my mistakes. Hell, I was pretty damn pissed after Milwaukee, which probably started the whole tunnel vision thing." Henricksen said. "But, your guys egging me on and telling me I've got the right guy the whole way through didn't help. If your department pulls that crap again, it'll hurt the credibility of your unit amongst the agents who depend on your profiles to catch criminals. Even worse, it'll hurt someone else. Some poor harmless lunatic who carries a rifle loaded with rock salt like the ones the Winchesters carry to chase off ghosts will probably get it between the eyes without knowing why."

"They carried rifles loaded with rock salt?" she found herself asking. There was only one type of person she knew of that regularly carried rifles loaded with rock salt, and her Grandma Campbell had been one of them.

Suddenly the little things that she hadn't really been paying attention to had come glaringly into focus. There was a small and almost unnoticeable line of salt along the windowsill. There was a brand new welcome mat in front of the door. There was nearly invisible pattern in the carpet surrounding Henricksen's desk, and a brand new silver letter opener resting on top of it. She had three guesses what kind of water Henricksen had offered her, and she was pretty sure that two of them didn't count.

Shit. Shit. Shit. She should have paid better attention to just who the hell her unit was hunting. Henricksen wasn't just telling her that she had a problem with her department. He was trying to tell her that she had a _hellishly _massive problem with her department. She would have to be careful not to clue anybody into the fact that she was now aware of this problem until she could personally deal with it. Grandma Campbell had taught her more than how to bake apple pies afterall, that and several of her cousins were active hunters who had taught her tricks of the trade when they visited during holidays. Her going into the FBI had been a bit of a disappointment, even though she had repeatedly told everyone that she was helping hunt human evil which could do just as much as or more damage than the monsters her mother's family hunted.

"Yeah. They had two sets of sawed off shotguns. The ones that were loaded with actual buckshot rounds were rarely used and clearly marked. Imagine my surprise when I went back over the footage of the bank situation in Milwaukee and saw that Dean was threatening the old guy with one of the salt rifles. Seems the story of the Winchesters trying to keep the poor guy who went off the deep end after a man everyone else claimed was his friend robbed the bank he worked at under control had at least a little bit of truth to it. " Henricksen replied.

"Interesting." she replied. "Thanks for the heads up. Until the problem is dealt with, I suggest you take anything my department gives you with a line of salt."

Henricksen raised an eyebrow at her deliberate mangling of the metaphor.

"A little salt, silver, and iron was my grandma Campbell's cureall for everything. Goodbye Agent Henricksen, I'll take your suggestions under advisement." she said with a smile.


	2. The Exorcism of Derek Morgan

Erin Strauss sighed as she adjusted the doormat that she'd just laid inside the doorway to the conference room. It would most likely look slightly out of place since anyone who entered would be going from a carpeted area to a carpeted area, but it was the Devil's Trap that was drawn on the underside of the mat that mattered. She would be meeting with her top team this morning, one of whom, Agent Reid, had helped work on the Winchester Profile during his limited free time. While this was possibly revealing her hand far too soon, she didn't want any demons in her office causing further damage to it or their reputation.

A little bit of research done on the Winchesters had revealed them to be distant cousins on their mother's side from a branch of the Campbell family that had settled in Kansas. They were the grandchildren of Samuel and Deanna Campbell who had been killed by a demon. Their mother Mary had retired for about a decade before she was killed in a house fire of unnatural origin, and her husband John started hunting, dragging the kids along with him. This wasn't just about a pair of hunters who had become thorns in the devil's side and were being made to pay the price, this was about family. Distant family, but family nonetheless. Someone had been messing with her family, and had been using her department to do it.

She would find that someone, and teach it why you never messed with a Campbell.

If the team passed the Devil's Trap test, she had a couple more tests up her sleeve such as the silver plated tray full of cookies in the center of the table, and the pitcher of that powdered lemonade which had been made with holy water. She'd be watching the tray closely to see who went out of their way to avoid touching it, and discreetly touch them with something silver later. If there was something unnatural in her department, she would be the first to know about it, and the one to deal with it.

She may not be an active hunter, but she was in reasonably good shape, and knew what to do in a wide variety of supernatural situations.

&!&!&!&

David Rossi frowned as he entered the conference room. Erin Strauss wasn't the sort to lay out cookies and lemonade, which in itself was a rather odd combination if you thought about it. Strauss was the sort who complained how he and his team got things done, and threatened to have them investigated for their misconduct. She'd eased up a bit since the day she went out in the field and saw what they did firsthand, but she still rode their asses on occasion. Something was up. He didn't know what though.

Since he knew that Erin wasn't the sort who would poison him and his team no matter how pissed she got at them, he took a cookie from the silver tray and poured himself a glass of lemonade, and sat down to watch and wait.

It was while he was mentally reviewing Erin's reactions as he took the cookie and drank the lemonade that several pieces of the puzzle fit themselves together. He'd seen that behavior in a man he'd encountered during one of his cases, the man who had introduced him to the other kind of evil that was in the world.

He'd stood at a figurative crossroads that day, and made his choice. He would fight the good fight by dealing with the evil that man did to one another. If he tried to fight both man and the creatures that roamed the dark, he would have been stretched too thin, and he would have eventually gone insane trying to deal with all of the things that lurked out there. That didn't mean that he wouldn't help out any Hunters he encountered though, and it didn't mean that he wouldn't alert hunters if there was a problem that needed dealing with. He'd discreetly handed a couple cases that he couldn't deal with himself over to the proper authorities over the years.

"Are you going to poke me with an iron nail as well?" he asked.

"Do I need to?" Strauss asked half seriously.

As he watched, Hotchner, Reid, JJ, Prentiss and Garcia all passed Strauss' little test. When it came to Morgan however...

"I think I'll stand right here. Morgan called from the doorway.

"Christus." he said at the same time Strauss said "Christo". Both meant "Christ" in Latin, "Christus" being second declension nominative, and "Christo" being second declension dative. But "Christo", which hunters often used, was rather improper grammar. It worked however, so the hunters didn't bother correcting their grammar despite the fact that "Christo" technically meant "to Christ" as in "I'm giving this demon's ass to Christ the instant I'm done kicking it.".

Morgan flinched, and Rossi found himself wondering if he'd ever known the man at all. He could have been possessed since long before he had joined the unit, and since he'd never bothered testing his team, he wouldn't have known. If they needed to, a demon could act like a normal person right up until the point they ripped your face off, or tore your heart out. Literally or metaphorically. The fact that Morgan tended to avoid churches would have been a big clue long ago, but nowadays, even normal people avoided them.

His and Strauss' eyes met, and they both started on the exorcism to free Morgan from the thing that was wearing his skin. It seems that they both learned different exorcisms, as Strauss' didn't match up with his. He'd learned his from an old man named Rufus Turner whom he didn't arrest afterward despite the fact that the man was wanted by the FBI for a number of crimes including murder. Eventually, the demon was gone, and Morgan fell to the floor in a heap.

Rossi silently prayed to every deity that he could think of, hoping that the demon hadn't ridden Morgan too hard, and that Morgan wasn't dead. As he was silently praying to Loki of all gods, he reached Morgan's side. Morgan was breathing. He was a little beat up, but it didn't look too bad. He'd call an ambulance and go with him to the hospital to make sure, but it looked like he would live.

&!&!&!&

Agent Aaron Hotchner watched Strauss and Rossi debate the best way to deal with the Derek Morgan issue warily. He had not been aware that hunters had infiltrated the FBI, as they tended to avoid Law Enforcement like the plague when they weren't pretending to be Law Enforcement. He himself had little sympathy for that fringe group. More often than not, they tended to go after any supernatural creature regardless of whether or not they were causing any harm. Case in point being a family of ghouls who had been minding their own business and limiting themselves to robbing the occasional graveyard for food, but otherwise being completely inoffensive churchgoing members of their community that had been hunted down and slaughtered nearly two decades ago.

He himself had been good at keeping himself locked up during the full moon. He'd had to be discreet about it when he was in the field, but he hadn't gotten loose yet, and his wife and his son had known better than to go near him during the full moon. It hadn't been his fault that he'd been bitten by that werewolf when he was a teenager, and he didn't feel that he or anyone else who had been bitten deserved to die for it. Especially not people who had the problem under control and kept it that way.

Fortunately for his continued survival, he had gotten rather adept at avoiding silver without appearing to do so, since he was a man, not wearing jewelry aside from a gold wedding band wasn't that odd. As holy water didn't affect werewolves, there were no problems on the lemonade front. Cookies and lemonade were a bit odd, but he was guessing that someone who was affected by holy water would be able to spot if the milk had been the powdered kind and be suspicious, especially since Strauss was a bit of a hard ass, and didn't go handing out treats, and giving out cookies and milk wasn't Rossi's usual MO.

Hunters almost always shot first and asked questions later if at all. That attitude was the reason the more experienced ones survived, but it had also cost a number of good people who happened to not exactly be human their lives, thanks to the bad apples in the bunch who gave their kind a rotten name.


End file.
